Sunday, March 15, 2009

Your mother is a spaceship

“Roll your mother!” The very underrated Starfarers of Catan has what is probably the single greatest game component I have ever seen, the mothership. Part dice, part game counter, and more than a little bit phallic; the mothership adds a great element to the game. I won’t go so far as to say it is like flying a real spaceship, but it’s pretty awesome.

First off, everyone that I know loves equipment and accessories and this has plenty. About 6 inches in height and topped with a colored ring (different for each player) it is loaded with boosters, cannons, freight rings, and fame rings over the course of the game. Cool, and very practical in the sense that it is easy to see everything that a rival starfarer has going for them. The bottom of the ship has a small plastic tube that contains four different colored balls, each of which has a numerical value (0-3) and essentially serves the same function as die. When the black ball comes up first it signals an encounter in the far reaches of space (Pirates? A spaceship hurtling into a sun?), otherwise you total up the value for the two displayed balls and move. A great and clever substitute for a d6.